


run for the life of me

by Anjali_Organna



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2707445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anjali_Organna/pseuds/Anjali_Organna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Barry lies to Iris, and one time he tells the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	run for the life of me

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before 1x08 aired and so does not take any of the Flash/Arrow crossover into account. Many thanks to kepp0xy for the beta. Title is from Rosi Golan's "Come Around."

**1.**  
Alone in his new room in Joe and Iris’s house, Barry curls up under the bed, clutching a pillow to muffle the sounds of sobbing. It’s not _his_ pillow and _his_ bed. He’s not allowed to go back to _his_ house with his pillow and his bed. He doesn’t know if all of the things he had to leave behind are still there, and he doesn’t want to ask Joe. He doesn’t want to know.

Iris comes in, pulling off the comforter and making a nest on the floor, right next to the bed. She has a book with her and settles down, within eyesight. Barry can see her profile, so familiar, as well as the box of tissues that she slides toward him without looking. She opens the book and begins to read aloud.

After a while, Barry is able to breathe slowly, without his breath hitching. He crawls out, still listening, and rests his head against her leg. She pauses, eyes not moving from the page.

“I’m okay,” he says. “I’m okay.”

She nods once, and keeps reading. 

  


**2.**  
Barry is thirteen when it happens. Iris had gone out with a girlfriend and her mother on a mysterious errand, leaving Barry free to monopolize the computer in the family room to his heart’s desire. (Joe had taken one look at the screen filled with schematics and had retreated to the kitchen, shaking his head.) When she finally returns home, flushed and happy, carrying several bags, Barry had barely looked up, lost in an online discussion debating the merits of the British Underground versus the New York Subway. She’d rolled her eyes at him and disappeared upstairs, and Barry continues reading, happily oblivious to the curveball life is about to throw his way.

He doesn’t know how long she is gone. All he knows is that when he next looks up, she is standing in the living room wearing a dress unlike anything he’d ever seen on her, a tentative expression on her face. “Do you like it?” she asks hesitantly. “It’s for the dance next week.”

Barry doesn’t answer her. He’s forgotten English. He’s also forgotten how to breathe, a fact which becomes painfully obvious after a moment. Then Joe brushes by him, arms outstretched, saying, “Honey, you look beautiful,” and enfolds his daughter in a hug, and Barry takes in a gasping lungful of air. Iris is looking down at the dress, grinning happily, and her father is saying something, Barry isn’t really processing. All he can think is, _Beautiful doesn’t even come close._

“Well?” She is looking at him now, eyes bright and expectant.

“You look...nice,” he says.

“Nice?” She makes a face at him. “Just _‘nice?'"_

Next to her, Joe laughs. “Barry Allen, always a charmer.”

“Yeah,” Barry says, stronger now. “Nice.” 

  


**3.**  
“Your dad is going to _love_ that tie,” he says, straight-faced. 

She swats him. “I’ll tell him you picked it out.”

  


**4.**  
"Everyone important in your life knew, except for me." Iris's voice is raw, and Barry closes his eyes.

"I wanted to keep you safe."

"I've been writing about the Flash for weeks now. I know you tried to stop me at first, but--but then you came to me. As the Flash. Repeatedly. This has nothing to do with you wanting to keep me safe, Barry. You didn't trust me."

He stands motionless, sick with misery.

"I don't _understand_ ," Iris says, and Barry can feel his heart breaking under the weight of the anguish in that one word. Then her face changes, going from hurt to fury. "Wait. Did my _father_.... Did he make you...?"

And this is one lie he tells easily. Too much else has been damaged tonight. "No, Iris. It's my fault. I'm so sorry."

The slam of the door echoes through his tiny apartment.

  


**5.**  
There is blood everywhere. After nearly a year of being the Flash, Barry has gotten used to the sight, but this time is different. This time it is Iris’s blood. Barry is panicking. 

Caitlin is shouting instructions in his earpiece, and Barry tries to focus, tries to understand what she’s saying, but Iris _isn’t moving _, and he’s shaking so hard he can barely see straight.__

There had been only one shot, but so often, one shot is all it takes.

“Iris _please_ , Iris, don’t, you can’t die, not like this....” 

“Barry, listen,” Caitlin says. “You have to be careful, a fall like that, she could have a spinal injury, I don’t know if you should move her….”

“I can’t just….She’s _bleeding_ , Caitlin, she needs help!”

“I know, Barry, I know,” Caitlin says, and he can hear her own distress through his earpiece. 

“I’m not just going to let her--I _love_ her, Caitlin, I need to save her--”

“An ambulance is on its way, Barry, just _hold on_ …”

Iris coughs, blood flecking her lips. “Barry…?” Her voice croaks out.

Barry swoops down close, hands hovering over her helplessly. “Iris, it’s okay, it’s me. It’s gonna be okay.”

Her smile is weak. It’s the most wonderful thing he’s seen. _Screw it_ , he thinks, and gathers her close.

*

“You can see her now,” Caitlin says, smiling, and Barry’s by her in a...well, you know.

And _this_ is the most wonderful thing he’s seen: Iris, sitting up, smiling at him. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says and she smiles even wider.

“I got the story though,” she says, just a little smug, and his relief is a tidal wave washing over him. 

“Yeah, and then you _got shot_ and _fell off a building_.”

She shrugs. “Journalistic hazard. Besides,” and here her face grows fond, “I knew you were coming.”

His smile fades. “I almost didn’t make it in time.”

Iris takes his hand in her own. “But you did, and that’s all that matters.” There’s a pause as she looks down at their clasped hands, a shadow crossing over her face.

“Iris?”

“Barry, did you…” She trails off, uncertain. “I mean, I thought I heard you…”

Barry keeps his face perfectly still. “Yeah?”

She frowns, letting go of his hand and smoothing the blanket covering her legs. “Never mind.”

He stays quiet. Later he tries to tell himself that it’s not at all the same thing as lying to her outright. He can’t quite make himself believe it.

  


**6.**  
The next time, the blood is his own. There’s too much, Barry knows, and his body isn’t healing fast enough. Pain crawls across him in dizzying waves and there is something terribly, terribly wrong with his left leg; he knows he can’t walk, let alone run, but he doesn’t want to look down at himself to assess the damage. Right now, all he can really focus on is the fact that his earpiece is broken. Shame, that. He’d have liked to hear her voice one last time.

He must have passed out, because the next thing he knows, Iris is holding his head in her lap. She’s sobbing, tears falling onto his face, and the only thing that matters in the world is making her feel better. 

“Hey, hey,” he croaks, and now she’s swearing at him, squeezing his shoulders, but at least she’s stopped crying. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Just hold on, Barry, my dad is coming, he’s got Caitlin--”

“Iris. Iris,” he says, and the pain has faded to dullness now, like his brain has hit the mute button so that all he is aware of is her. She strokes his cheek, so gently, and her eyes are wide and afraid.

“Barry, help is coming, please just stay with me.”

“Shhh,” he murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere. Iris.” He closes his eyes--just for a minute, he’s just so tired, and Iris is here now.

“No, Barry, you have to stay awake--please open your eyes, please, I need you to look at me.”

With great effort, he does, because she asked, and because looking at her is one of the great pleasures of his life. “You’re so…”

“Barry? Barry?”

He notices, with almost clinical detachment, that his vision is going white and fuzzy around the edges. Iris is limned in light, like an angel in a religious painting, and Barry smiles because this is probably the only thing that’s happened in the entire day that makes sense to him. 

“Iris,” he says, his voice coming fainter. “Iris. Love you. Always have. Always will.” He smiles at her one last time, and then drifts into silence.

*

Waking up _hurts_. Barry goes from blissful unawareness to screaming agony in the blink of an eye, and it’s not until Caitlin has given him something for the pain that he can even process the fact that he’s still alive. 

After she finishes yelling at him, it’s time for Dr. Wells. Cisco doesn’t yell, but Barry remembers the state of his suit and figures that it’s only a matter of time. Then Joe arrives and Barry braces himself because it’s always worse when a parent is disappointed in you.

Joe sits on the side of the bed, the lines around his eyes loosening as he takes in Barry’s alert state. “I told you to wait for backup,” he says mildly, his hand coming to rest lightly on Barry’s shoulder.

Barry grins weakly. “I know. Sorry. I’d promise that it won’t happen again, but…”

Joe squeezes gently. “Yeah. The city needed saving, so you went ahead and saved it.”

“Joe...where’s Iris?” Her absence had been the second thing Barry had noticed upon waking, right after all the “Ow ow it hurts make it stop.”

“She’s here. She’s just sleeping. Caitlin set her up in a room somewhere,” Joe says, waving vaguely toward the door. “Want me to…?”

“I’ll go,” Caitlin says now, moving across the room. “Be right back.”

When Iris comes in, Barry raises his brows at the Star Labs t-shirt. “That’s a different look for you.”

“You owe me a new leather jacket,” she says, coming to sit on the other side of the bed. “You bled all over mine.”

He winces. “You loved that jacket.”

“Yeah.” She glances up at the rest of the room. “Hey, would everyone mind stepping out for a minute?”

Barry is suddenly aware of the blood rushing in his ears. Behind Iris’s back, Cisco makes a gleeful face and gives him a thumbs-up. Caitlin, catching sight of this, rolls her eyes and drags him out. Wells wheels out after them, an unreadable look on his face, but that’s nothing new.

“Dad…?” 

Joe stands slowly, smiling down at his daughter. “Now, Iris, remember. Barry’s just recovered from several life-threatening injuries.”

“I was the one who found him,” Iris says. “I’m not going to forget those injuries anytime soon.”

“Also, I think he was already yelled at by the rest of the team,” Joe adds.

“Good,” she replies. “Then I don’t have to.”

Joe smiles again at his daughter, gives Barry a friendly pat, and leaves, glancing back once before shutting the door.

Barry looks apprehensively at Iris. “Look, I’m really sorry--”

“Do you love me, Barry?” Her eyes are direct. 

Barry gulps. “Uh, of course I do, Iris, you’re my--”

“No,” Iris interrupts. “That’s not what--I know you….” She looks down. “Yesterday, when you said...you made it sound like….”

There's a pause as she swallows, her throat constricting delicately. “When you passed out in my arms, Barry, I thought...I thought for a moment that you had died.” Iris looks back up at him, her eyes filled with tears. “And it was like everything just...stopped. 

“After the storm, it was different--you were in a coma. There was always a chance you would wake up. And you did, you did wake up, you came back. But yesterday…” She shakes her head, as though to clear it. “Barry, I know that what you’re doing as the Flash is important. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I would never ask you to give that up.”

“Iris…” Barry begins.

“No, let me finish. I would never ask you to give that up. But I thought I lost you yesterday, and so…” she pauses, lacing her fingers through his, and Barry can hardly breathe, “...so I need to tell you, now before it’s too late, that I love you.” 

Iris looks him straight in the eye. “And I think that you love me.”

Her chin is up and her gaze is clear, but he can see the flutter of her heartbeat in her throat. His heart constricts, and he’s swamped with a wave of love. She is so brave, always. Barry realizes that it’s time for him to be brave as well.

He reaches up a hand and traces the outline of her cheek. Iris closes her eyes, leaning into his palm. And then Barry opens his mouth, and tells her the truth.


End file.
